Understanding Mononoke over the Ages

One key to the Japanese mind is the traditional Japanese attitude toward the spirit, and a key to this attitude is the poorly understood element known as mononoke. However, the Japanese perception of the spirit world presents both enduring and changing elements, and as that perception has changed, so has the concept of mononoke. We will begin here by examining the concept in its original context, the court literature of the Heian period (794–1185).

THE CONCEPT OF "MONO"

One way to understand the original meaning of mononoke is to analyze its components, beginning with mono. This seemingly simple and straightforward word, generally translated into English as "thing" nowadays, carries a different and far more subtle meaning in the context of Heian literature.

In truth, the word mono is not limited to tangible objects even today. One modern Japanese dictionary (Shinchô kokugo jiten) offers the following definition: "Any tangible or intangible thing (buttai) that can be perceived by the human senses or the human mind." While people of the modern era are accustomed to thinking of buttai as tangible objects, there is also a concept of intangible objects in Japanese culture. Although something may not be visible to the eye, it is still mono as long as human beings can grasp its existence by means of the senses or the mind.

One of the terms most frequently cited as conveying an essential aspect of Japanese culture is mono no aware. The term appears repeatedly in the eleventh-century Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji) and was revived and made famous by the noted Edo-period classical scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) in his study of that work, Genji monogatari tama no ogushi (1796).

In fact, mono no aware appears sprinkled throughout classical literature, particularly the fiction and poetry of the Heian period. Its earliest known appearance is in the Tosa nikki (Tosa Diary) by the poet Ki no Tsurayuki (872?–945), and a good example of its usage can be seen in the following anonymous waka (31-syllable Japanese poem) from the early-eleventh-century poetry anthology Shûi wakashû (Collection of Gleanings).

Haru wa tada

hana no hitoe ni

saku bakari;

mono no aware wa

aki zo masareru

Spring is merely

A profusion of flowers,

But autumn surpasses it

In mono no aware.

Among the Heian aristocracy, spring and autumn were acknowledged to be the seasons with the greatest emotional resonance (there are relatively few waka extolling the moods or sensations of summer or winter), and among the elegant pastimes featured in Genji monogatari is a debate over which of these two seasons affect one more deeply. The waka above is part of the same general argument and represents a vote in favor of autumn.

How should we understand the term mono no aware as it appears here? The Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei (New Compendium of Japanese Classical Literature) published by Iwanami Shoten defines mono no aware as "feelings and sentiments toward nature, the seasons, society, human beings, etc." A bit more specifically, mono no aware refers to the poignant feelings that well up in the human heart through contact with various things (mono). As catalysts that trigger such deep emotion, these are matters that transcend mere substance and have long been accorded a special treatment in Japanese culture.

The indefinite or intangible qualities associated with the word mono in earlier times can be seen today in its function as a prefix for adjectives. In this context, mono can carry the sense of "somehow," indicating a subtle quality rather than a glaring attribute. For example, while shizuka simply means "quiet," mono-shizuka is more like "of quiet nature"; similarly, while sabishii means "lonely," mono-sabishii describes someone or something that is "lonesome of aspect."

Mono can also inject a mysterious and at times sinister element. In fact, the religious studies scholar Kamata Tôji has insisted that mono as it is used in the ancient period is often best translated as "spirit." As long as one does not limit the meaning of "spirit" to the human soul, it does seem a far more apt translation than the all-too-bland "thing."

Monoguruoshi, which combines mono with a form of the word for "mad," refers to a state in which one is so agitated that one can no longer maintain a feeling or semblance of sanity. In essence, one is driven crazy by some undefinable thing (mono); that is, one’s spirit is controlled by something that cannot be clearly apprehended. In nô drama, monogurui nô refers to a scene in which the protagonist speaks and behaves like a madman. In the famous opening passage of the fourteenth-century classic Tsurezuregusa, Yoshida Kenkô writes of his idleness, ayashû koso monoguruoshikere: "what a strange, demented feeling" (Essays in Idleness, trans. Donald Keene). Monotsuki, meanwhile, refers to possession by a formless, malevolent spirit. In some cases, the nature of the possessing entity may become clear, but in many cases it cannot even be identified. Such an entity is referred to in Heian literature as mononoke.

"MONONOKE" IN HEIAN LITERATURE

In early times, as seen in such courtly literature as Genji monogatari, people believed that the malignant spirits of the dead or the living were capable of possessing the bodies of human beings, and they turned to diviners and shamans to assist in their exorcism. (Note, however, that while contemporary novels tend to portray such diviners as superheroes who drive out the demons with their own powers, in reality their role was simply to identify the mononoke. It was up to an esoteric Buddhist priest to perform the actual exorcism.)

In the following passage from Genji monogatari we learn of the illness of Genji’s wife Aoi. Pregnant and weakened by her condition, she has been possessed by the jealous spirit of Lady Rokujô, an extremely powerful and fearsome mononoke. At this point, however, no one understands the nature of the thing possessing Aoi—whether it bears some malice toward Genji’s wife in particular or is a spirit that has haunted their residence for generations.<

-Ôidono ni wa, on mononoke mekite itô wazurai tamaeba, tare mo tare mo oboshinageku ni . . .-

At his Excellency’s a spirit, it seemed, was making the lady extremely unwell, and her family was alarmed. (trans. Royall Tyler)

It will be noted that in the above citation, mononoke is rendered in the phonetic hiragana syllabary, without kanji (Sino-Japanese ideographic characters), and this is how it almost invariably appears in Heian literature. In time, kanji were assigned to the word; mono is conventionally represented by 物, but there is some disagreement over the preferred character for ke. One is 気, a character whose basic meaning is something like "essence" or "energy." Far more common today, however, is 怪, a character signifying something weird or suspicious or a specter of some sort. Since the mononoke in Genji monogatari and other Heian works are mysterious, formless spirits, it seems far more appropriate to use 気. Nonetheless, two of the best-known annotated editions of Genji monogatari have rendered mononoke as 物怪, and this version has therefore taken hold.*

Another interesting usage of mononoke appears in the late-tenth-century Makura no sôshi (trans. The Pillow Book of Sei Shônagon). Here, mononoke, appearing in a straightforward list of maladies, appears to mean mental illness, reflecting the then-current idea that mononoke were responsible for sickness, especially of the mental or emotional variety. This provides further support for the use of the character 気.

The word 物怪 also appears in classical literature, but it is believed to have been pronounced mono no satoshi, using the native Japanese reading for both characters, and to have signified an omen or portent. An example can be found in the Konjaku monogatari shû (partial trans. Tales of Times Now Past), a collection of stories from earlier times compiled in the first half of the twelfth century.

Sore ni, kono koto ni yorite samazama no mono no satoshi arikereba, uranawa suru ni . . .

However, as a result, there occurred various omens, and a divination was called for. (italics added)

Since Konjaku monogatari shû is written entirely in Chinese characters, the originally intended pronunciation of the word cannot be confirmed, but this example makes clear that the meaning was not the same as mononoke. Here as before, however, mono refers to something unknown and intangible—in this case, an unknown occurrence of which people receive a portent, or satoshi. Thus, mono here carries much the same meaning as the mono in mononoke.

Recently, the word mononoke has gained currency as a result of Miyazaki Hayao’s 1997 animated feature film Mononoke hime (Princess Mononoke), a huge box-office hit in both Japan and the United States. Set sometime in Japan’s medieval past, it tells the story of a battle between human beings and the spirit of the forest, which Miyazaki refers to as mononoke. Princess Mononoke, a heroic young girl spiritually connected to the mononoke, challenges the people trying to destroy her forest in a fierce battle. Watching this film, I found myself wondering about this use of the word mononoke in the title. As it is used in the Heian period, mononoke is something highly elusive, intangible, and unfathomable. In the film, however, it assumes a very concrete form, often appearing as an animal, such as a great wolf or wild boar. It is unclear why Miyazaki chose the word mononoke, but partly due to the influence of the film, the term has recently come to be used to refer to any concrete thing with a strange or eerie aspect, and is sometimes used interchangeably with yôkai, a monster, ghost, or apparition.

Yôkai itself is a word that was rarely used until the Edo period (1603–1868). In the isolated cases in which it occurs in earlier writings, it means a strange or menacing occurrence. However, the yôkai of modern times are specters with a very concrete form, as typified by the manga (comics) of Mizuki Shigeru. Their origins can be traced back to eighteenth-century illustrations, including such pictorial works as the woodblock prints titled Gazu hyakki yakô (Nighttime Procession of 100 Demons) of Toriyama Sekien (1712–88). Yôkai also appear in Edo-period picture books in the form of humorous cartoons portraying such specters as the one-eyed goblin, the tôfu goblin, the long-necked goblin, and so forth. These whimsical monsters cannot be traced back any earlier than the Edo period and are quite distinct from the mononoke of the ancient and medieval periods.

The mononoke of the Heian period were horrifying precisely because they were unknowable. Once such ghosts and other spirits took on a visible form, however, they lost the horror of the unknown, and this is why the yôkai created in the Edo period have been able to take their place as the pets, mascots, and playmates of today’s Japanese schoolchildren. Mononoke, by contrast, are always dangerous entities that not only terrorize people but can even cause injury and death.

SPIRITS INHABITING INANIMATE OBJECTS

Until now we have focused primarily on literature of the Heian period. In the succeeding medieval period, however, the spirit world undergoes a transformation, and we see emerging the curious concept of inanimate objects becoming animate. The best-known example of this is the tsukumogami depicted in short stories of the Muromachi period (1333–1568).

The tsukumogami are a kind of spook or specter unique to the Muromachi period, an era that saw the development of a money economy and a smooth distribution system. The final kanji in this word is the character for kami, or deity, but these entities are far removed from the kami of Japanese mythology or the Shintô religion. They are discarded workaday objects, such as tools and utensils, which, having reached a certain advanced age (about 100 years), take on a life of their own. Although the origin of the name is unclear, one theory traces it to a poem in the tenth-century Ise monogatari, in which the hero Ariwara Narihira finds himself the object of an elderly woman’s infatuation and sleeps with her, but fails to visit her again. Wanting to see him again, the woman comes to his house and peers in. When Narihira notices her, he recites the following poem:

Momotose ni

hitotose taranu

tsukumogami

ware o kôrashi

Omokage ni miyu

The lady with thinning hair—

But a year short

Of a hundred—

Must be longing for me,

For I seem to see her face.

(Tales of Ise, trans. Helen Craig McCullough)

Here the -gami in tsukumogami clearly refers to hair (kami, a homophone of the word for deity). It is not certain exactly what type of hair is indicated by tsukumogami, but inasmuch as tsukumo is sometimes written using the kanji for the number 99, it probably refers to the dry, thinning hair of an elderly woman. By taking -gami to refer instead to supernatural spirits, people may have adopted this word to indicate the specters that emerge when objects have passed their 99th year.

To understand why such specters came into being, we need to backtrack a bit. The mononoke of the Heian period were formless spirits that possessed human beings and caused them grief and illness. But as the years passed, these intangible mononoke disappeared from Japanese literature, to be replaced by spirits that manifested themselves as concrete objects, or objects possessed by spirits. An early example of the concept appears in the Konjaku monogatari shû, where a spirit takes on the appearance of a board and crushes a person to death (story 18, book 27) and elsewhere a spirit kills someone after taking on the form of an oil jar (story 19, book 27). In the same work, we encounter a tale in which a copper kettle that was long buried in the ground reappears in the form of a human being, indicating that this inanimate object has a spirit of its own (story 6, book 27).

The notion of a spirit dwelling within inanimate objects may seem to be no more than a manifestation of the ancient Japanese belief in a multitude of kami inhabiting old trees and other natural objects. However, the idea that even ordinary household objects had spirits of their own was a new phenomenon, possibly related to the Tendai Buddhist belief that all sentient and nonsentient beings could achieve buddhahood. In the Muromachi period, when people increasingly bought objects crafted by artisans and sold by merchants instead of making their own tools and utensils, it became easier to discard and replace such things. This situation provided fertile soil for the belief that, as the years went by, the discarded objects took on a spirit of their own and would take revenge for being abandoned. In other words, the phenomenon of the tsukumogami can only be properly understood within the context of the developing money economy of the Muromachi period.

The particulars of tsukumogami are described in a Muromachi-period narrative handscroll illustrating the medieval tale Tsukumogami ki. In this scroll the various tools and utensils discarded by a household during its year-end cleaning wait until the first day of spring to rise up as specters. They begin to wreak revenge against the human beings who discarded them but are subdued by the power of the Buddhist scriptures. They then mend their evil ways and become Buddhist monks. The images depicting the metamorphosis of the objects have a playful and comical touch, and the overall mood of the scroll is more fun than frightening. A set of handscrolls called the Hyakki yakô emaki (Night Procession of 100 Demons) also includes a procession of tsukumogami, but since there is no text, the story is unclear. My own theory is that this portion of the Hyakki yakô emaki is in fact a modified copy of a section from the Tsukumogami ki depicting a ceremonial procession.

Considerably removed from the Heian-period concept of mononoke, this type of evil spirit can nonetheless be regarded as the new breed of mononoke that evolved in Japan’s medieval period, since it materializes when mono as concrete objects are inhabited by mono as spirits. There is a tendency to examine mononoke solely within the context of Heian literature, but it seems to me that more attention should be given to the mononoke that were shaped by the new ideas of the medieval period. Although a tale of revenge by cast-off belongings may strike us as an absurd plot for a story, its implications for the enduring character traits of the Japanese are fascinating. First of all, it reflects their traditional belief that spirits reside in all things. In addition, it speaks of a regretful and censorious attitude toward waste, as expressed in the common word mottainai (meaning "it’s a shame to waste")—which, by the way, has taken on new significance in the context of the environmental movement.

The perceptions and concepts underlying the tsukumogami have by no means died out in Japan. Even today some Buddhist temples hold a ceremony called hari kuyô—in essence, a funeral service for discarded needles. This practice of giving thanks to the spirits of used needles began only in the modern era, but the underlying mentality is clearly linked to the kind of thinking that gave rise to tsukumogami in the medieval period. Times have certainly changed, but it would not be surprising if one began to hear eerie tales of discarded computers coming to life in the middle of the night and creeping up on their sleeping owners to exact their revenge.

Translated from an original article in Japanese written for Japan Echo.

*The second no, not written in kanji, is a particle connecting the two nouns mono and ke

© 2006 Japan Echo Inc.